5 Seconds Of Summer Announce Australia Tour With State Champs, Pop-Punk World Implodes

May 4th, 2015 John Bazley

In an unexpected move, 5 Seconds Of Summer have announced that New York pop-punk band State Champs will be directly supporting the band on their upcoming Australia / New Zealand tour.

Since the One Direction prodigy boy band graced the cover of Alternative Press last year, speculation has run wild that 5 Seconds of Summer are important to the pop-punk scene, and will bring pop-punk back to the radio. While there are certainly a few flaws in that logic, this tour with State Champs is meaningful for the pop-punk scene at large.

State Champs are clearly already beginning to reap the benefits of the tour based on social numbers alone – a quick look through their recent followers on Twitter shows a huge number of new accounts that feature handles and avatars inspired by 5 Seconds of Summer and their members. “State Champs” was a trending topic in the US on Twitter last night for over an hour, likely due to 5 Seconds of Summer’s influx of fans discovering the band and tweeting about them.

While this is undeniably good news for all parties involved, the pop-punk-internet hasn’t been entirely supportive of the tour package. One look through the infamous Defend Pop Punk Facebook group shows a hefty number of haters, wishing that the tour lineup would change.

Despite the hate from the inner circles of the scene, I’m all for this lineup. The guys in State Champs make great, catchy music and have an honest shot at making it in the mainstream. Here’s some advice: If you love a band and want to support them, let them move out of the basement and do bigger and better things. This is a huge opportunity for a great band to see some legitimate success – that’s never a bad thing.

Check out the full list of dates below. Ticket info can be found here.